I've been drinking quite a lot of Oatly oat milk lately. I even added it to my milkman delivery, reducing the normal milk accordingly.
I don't particularly like it hot, and I don't like it in hot drinks, but I do like it cold. On its own, or frothed in cold, cold-brew coffee.
I saw a gadget for making nut/oat milk in my Facebook feed. I didn't buy the advertised gadget, I disappeared down a rabbit hole and ended up buying an even better one . I waited until I managed to get one for a reasonable price from FB Marketplace, as I wasn't convinced I was going to like the results.
The gadget I bought, a Miomat, is very good at its job.
Unfortunately, home made oat milk, made with just oats and water, tastes appalling and has a horrible texture.
I tried a second time, following the Nut method instead of the Cereal method. Oats are, my instruction book tells me, one of the few things that can be done either way.
It was marginally better, but still sh*te.
I sat down and read the back of the Oatly carton. I noticed that they added salt and rapeseed oil. I tried a 3rd time, substituting coconut oil for rapeseed oil (Rapeseed oil is not my friend. And coconut oil was one of the oil options given either in the recipe book or in an online recipe, I can't remember now.
The texture was marginally better, but the taste of coconut was a bit overpowering. I suppose I wasn't surprised, as oats don't actually have much flavour.
I was puzzled as to why there was so much difference between what I was making and Oatly. I had stupidly assumed that Oatly was just Oat Milk, so I was also feeling a bit let down.
It was about to get worse.
I read the back of the carton again. I noticed that sugars were listed, but I had thought there weren't any added sugars (?) I did some googling, and I discovered a very helpful video, which explained it all. Apparently, Oatly add Amylase to their drink (plus vitamins and minerals). The amylase breaks up the starchy chain, releasing the sugars, which makes the drink taste much sweeter. This was confirmed on the US website for Oatly.
I had a look at getting some Amylase. I don't really want to be added stuff to my drink, I thought I was having a relatively unprocessed thing.... but I wanted to follow this through. The only Amylase I could find in the UK was stuff for brewing, stuff for school experiments which was labelled as not food safe, or pills and potions. The pills and potions contain all sorts of additional stuff, so they were out. The brewing stuff didn't look quite the same as the stuff the chap in the video used.
I asked on a friendly gadget group whether people had experience of making oatly-esque dtinks, and various suggestions were made (like adding dates). I will try that, but that won't give me Oatly.
In the end I ordered some Amylase from the US, the exact same stuff the chap in the video used, which will take a couple of weeks to get here.
I hope I remember what I wanted it for when it arrives.
